The use of music in film and multimedia : rising issues and challenges regarding the composer’s moral rights

Details

Supervisors

Strowel, Alain

Faculty

Faculté de droit et de criminologie

Degree label

Master [120] en droit

Abstract

How do moral rights fare in the 21st century? Even though they have become a commonly accepted concept since the Berne Convention of 1886, their regimes still vary wildly across the globe. A first major distinction in the approach taken by national authorities in the handling of these rights can be found in the traditional civil law countries and the common law countries, the latter being historically more pragmatic and business-minded than the first. In more general terms, the rigidity of moral rights seems to be at odds with the liberalization of art and the ensuing contractual practices. This paper illustrates these issues by taking as example the situation of music composers for film and multimedia, a position that has been made increasingly more accessible to the wider public thanks to modern technology. The fast-paced evolution of the last decades has led to extraordinary new challenges regarding the moral concerns of the composer. Our analysis will consist in identifying some of those new issues, and will be strewn with proposals for the evolution of the theoretical basis of moral rights, in an attempt to find a new equilibrium between the interests of all parties at stake, namely the authors, co-contractors and online users. These investigations are meant to try and provide an answer to the question: are moral rights an old-fashioned notion that should be put to bed due to its incompatibility with today’s connected world? As the globalization, the digitalization and the speed of today’s business world constantly increase, new principles emerge one should wonder how this will impact the future of moral rights.

Citations

• APA

Detaille, L. (2017). The use of music in film and multimedia : rising issues and challenges regarding the composer’s moral rights.